Frank Close

Distinguished particle physicist and popular science author Frank Close takes a journey to the heart of matter – and antimatter – which features four Bristolians: three Nobel Laureates and one spy.

Antimatter is the legacy of Bristolian Paul Dirac, who 90 years ago completed our understanding of atoms; today the Bristol Royal Infirmary uses antimatter in medical diagnostics. The atomic nucleus is the source of immense forces, whose agent – the ‘pion’ – was discovered 70 years ago at the University of Bristol by Cecil Powell. Meanwhile, nuclear secrets had been leaked during the 1940s by another agent – Klaus Fuchs – shortly after he completed his physics degree at Bristol. Finally Bristolian Peter Higgs explained why atoms and their nuclei have structure, and why the sun burns slowly enough for evolution to have happened, in a theory which was proved recently with discovery of the Higgs Boson.

This event is part of a day celebrating the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the pion, one of the major achievements in the history of physics at the University of Bristol.

In association with/

Frank Close

Frank Close OBE is Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University and Fellow of Exeter College Oxford. He was formerly Head of Theoretical Physics at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN. His research specialises in the quark and gluon structure of nuclear particles, on which he has published over 200 papers. He won the Institue of Physics Kelvin Medal in 1996 and in 2014 won the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize for Science Communication. Unique among scientists he has won the British Science Writers Prize on three occasions. He is the author of many books including Neutrino (2010), shortlisted for the Galileo Prize in 2013; The Infinity Puzzle, the story of the quest to discover the Higgs Boson; and Half-Life, biography of physicist and alleged spy Bruno Pontecorvo. He is currently researching the life of former Bristol physicist and atom spy, Klaus Fuchs, for his next book: Trinity.